The City of Light
in the Dark
WHEN ASKED TO ACCOUNT FOR the time I’ve spent in Paris, I reach for my carton of ticket stubs and groan beneath its weight. I’ve been here for more than a year, and while I haven’t seen the Louvre or the Pantheon, I have seen The Alamo and The Bridge on the River Kwai.” I haven’t made it to Versailles but did manage to catch Oklahoma!, Brazil, and Nashville. Aside from an occasional trip to the flea market, my knowledge of Paris is limited to what I learned in Gigi.
When visitors come from the United States, I draw up little itineraries. “If we go to the three o’clock Operation Petticoat, that should give us enough time to make it across town for the six o’clock screening of It Is Necessary to Save the Soldier Ryan, unless, of course, you’d rather see the four o’clock Ruggles of Red Gap and the seven o’clock Roman Holiday. Me, I’m pretty flexible, so why don’t you decide.”
My guests’ decisions prove that I am a poor judge of my own character. Ayatollahs are flexible. I am not. Given the choice between four perfectly acceptable movies, they invariably opt for a walk through the Picasso museum or a tour of the cathedral, saying, “I didn’t come all the way to Paris so I can sit in the dark.”
They make it sound so bad. “Yes,” I say, “but this is the French dark. It’s… darker than the dark we have back home.” In the end I give them a map and spare set of keys. They see Notre Dame, I see The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I’m often told that it’s wasteful to live in Paris and spend all my time watching American movies, that it’s like going to Cairo to eat cheeseburgers. “You could do that back home,” people say. But they’re wrong. I couldn’t live like this in the United States. With very few exceptions, video killed the American revival house. If you want to see a Boris Karloff movie, you have to rent it and watch it on a television set. In Paris it costs as much to rent a movie as it does to go to the theater. French people enjoy going out and watching their movies on a big screen. On any given week one has at least 250 pictures to choose from, at least a third of them in English. There are all the recent American releases, along with any old movie you’d ever want to see. On Easter, having learned that The Greatest Story Ever Told was sold out, I just crossed the street and saw Superfly, the second-greatest story ever told. Unless they’re for children, all movies are shown in their original English with French subtitles. Someone might say, “Get your fat ass out of here before I do something I regret,” and the screen will read, “Leave.”
I sometimes wonder why I even bothered with French class. “I am truly delighted to make your acquaintance,” “I heartily thank you for this succulent meal” — I have yet to use either of these pleasantries. Since moving to Paris my most often used phrase is “One place, please.” That’s what one says at the box office when ordering a ticket, and I say it quite well. In New York I’d go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I’ve upped it to six or seven, mainly because I’m too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It’s not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it’s just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we’ve agreed to lower the bar.
Circumstances foster my laziness. Within a five-block radius of my apartment there are four first-run multiplexes and a dozen thirty-to-fifty-seat revival houses with rotating programs devoted to obscure and well-known actors, directors, and genres. These are the mom-and-pop theaters, willing to proceed with the two o’clock showing of The Honeymoon Killers even if I’m the only one in the house. It’s as if someone had outfitted his den with a big screen and comfortable chairs. The woman at the box office sells you a ticket, rips it in half, and hands you the stub. Inside the theater you’re warmly greeted by a hostess who examines your stub and tears it just enough to make her presence felt. Somewhere along the line someone decided that this activity is worthy of a tip, so you give the woman some change, though I’ve never known why. It’s a mystery, like those big heads on Easter Island or the popularity of the teeny-weeny knapsack.
I’m so grateful such theaters still exist that I’d gladly tip the projectionist as well. Like the restaurants with only three tables, I wonder how some of these places manage to stay open. In America the theaters make most of their money at the concession stand, but here, at least in the smaller places, you’ll find nothing but an ice-cream machine tucked away between the bathroom and the fire exit. The larger theaters offer a bit more, but it’s still mainly candy and ice cream sold by a vendor with a tray around his neck. American theaters have begun issuing enormous cardboard trays, and it’s only a matter of time before the marquees read TRY OUR BARBECUED RIBS! OR COMPLIMENTARY BAKED POTATO WITH EVERY THIRTY-TWO-OUNCE SIRLOIN. When they started selling nachos, I knew that chicken wings couldn’t be far behind. Today’s hot dogs are only clearing the way for tomorrow’s hamburgers, and from there it’s only a short leap to the distribution of cutlery.
I’ve never considered myself an across-the-board apologist for the French, but there’s a lot to be said for an entire population that never, under any circumstances, talks during the picture. I’ve sat through Saturday-night slasher movies with audiences of teenagers and even then nobody has said a word. I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed silence in an American theater. It’s easy to believe that our audiences spend the day saying nothing, actually saving their voices for the moment the picture begins. At an average New York screening I once tapped the shoulder of the man in front of me, interrupting his spot review to ask if he planned on talking through the entire movie.
“Well… yeah. What about it?” He said this with no trace of shame or apology. It was as if I’d asked if he planned to circulate his blood or draw air into his lungs. “Gee, why wouldn’t I?” I moved away from the critic and found myself sitting beside a clairvoyant who loudly predicted the fates of the various characters seen moving their lips up on the screen. Next came an elderly couple constantly convinced they were missing something. A stranger would knock on the door, and they’d ask, “Who’s he?” I wanted to assure them that all their questions would be answered in due time, but I don’t believe in talking during movies, so I moved again, hoping I might be lucky enough to find a seat between two people who had either fallen asleep or died.
At a theater in Chicago I once sat beside a man who watched the movie while listening to a Cubs game on his transistor radio. When the usher was called, the sports fan announced that this was a free country and that he wanted to listen to the goddamn game. “Is there a law against doing both things at once?” he asked. “Is there a law? Show me the law, and I’ll turn off my radio.”
Sitting in Paris and watching my American movies, I think of the man with the transistor radio and feel the exact opposite of homesick. The camera glides over the cities of my past, capturing their energetic skylines just before they’re destroyed by the terrorist’s bomb or advancing alien warship. New York, Chicago, San Francisco: it’s like seeing pictures of people I know I could still sleep with if I wanted to. When the high-speed chases and mandatory shoot-outs become too repetitive, I head over to the revival houses and watch gentler movies in which the couples sleep in separate beds and everyone wears a hat. As my ticket is ripped I’ll briefly consider all the constructive things I could be doing. I think of the parks and the restaurants, of the pleasantries I’ll never use on the friends I am failing to make. I think of the great city teeming on the other side of that curtain, and then the lights go down, and I love Paris.